Is That Black Enough for You?!?

From Bill 'Bogangles' Robinson to Louis Gossett Jr. To Marlene Warfield to Denzel Washington (!), there are quite a number of major artists and performances missing. Yaphet Kotto is mentioned once, but his best performances ('Bone,' 'Report to the Commissioner,' 'Blue Collar') are not seen. Pearl Bailey is never mentioned and Redd Foxx is seen for 2 seconds. You would likely never know that Jim Brown and Fred Williamson were, in the 1970's, supreme sex symbol icons as well as icons of masculinity. Cicely Tyson's storied career is distilled to her Oscar nod for 'Sounder' and an appearance in one other film. Spike Lee's films (even his early work) gets glossed over. So, yes, I have some problems with it. However, I must admit that it is an admirable and sophisticated try. Should've been 3 hours long and they should've allowed the film clips to breath a bit more. A nice primer to whet the appetite of the film student. The initiated will find a number of cinematic holes and missed opportunities.

I watched this last night on Netflix, and found it often fascinating and informative, but sometimes frustrating, leaving me wanting to know more about Mitchell's views on certain films.

Basically, the issue here is that the film maker has decided that he wants to cover a LOT of Black films, which forces him to deal with some of them very quickly. One of the seven previous viewers attributes this to a desire on Mitchell's part to show off how many Black films he has seen, but that was not my impression. Rather, it's clear that he is fascinated with a lot of these movies, and intent on sharing his fascination and knowledge with us. That's hard to do in a movie, though, unlike in a book. Mitchell might have thought about doing what Ken Burns has done with some of his documentaries: focus on the most telling things in the movies themselves, and then provide the rest of the information in an accompanying picture book.

Books are good for annotated lists. Movies, not so much.

On the hand, because Mitchell sometimes seems like he is trying to be encyclopedic, some of the seven previous reviewers have criticized him for leaving out X or Y Black film or star. A few have a point, but others didn't pay attention. One complained that Mitchell left out James Brown, for example, which is not true. There is a very striking scene of Brown standing shirtless in a doorway, in all the glory of his virile, muscular, and very angry masculinity. It would have been nice to learn if he was offered roles other than those, but that would have taken more time than Mitchell had in this movie.

The same is true of some of the other previous criticism. Those viewers just didn't watch closely enough.

My take on this is that it was interesting for what it offered, but that it often left me wishing for more than just a tidbit on a given interesting movie. So, I guess, I would have preferred less encyclopedic coverage and more in-depth analysis of fewer movies.

On the other hand, I don't regret having seen any of what I saw.

Mitchell clearly knows this material. He should definitely treat us to an accompanying illustrated book, where he is not limited by time.

A brilliant encyclopedic survey of black cinema. The interviews are revealing and entertaining. There is a lot that is covered and it is organized well. I will be referring to this documentary repeatedly to watch films I haven't seen and never heard of. This film coupled with the black horror film documentary "Horror Noir" will feed the curious mind, enthralled by black cinema and its progression.

One of the more unexpected aspects is it's inclusion of experimental films, from animation to split screen. There is minimal focus on this but it does highlight ambitious storytelling and filmmakers responses to a restrictive system.

As "Is That Black Enough For You?!?" (2022 release; 135 min) opens, the voiceover (from director Elvis Mitchell) observes how his grandma was influenced by the movies she saw, and how it led to the golden era of black film making 1968 to 1978. Talking heads like Lawrence Fishburne, Harry Belafonte and Whoopi Goldberg offer their perspectives, and a wistful Mitchell asks "Why did these pictures stopped getting made?" At this point we are 10 min into the documentary.

Couple of comments: this is the directing debut of longtime writer, producer and film critic (including at one point for the New York Times) Eric Mitchell. Here he fondly looks back to the golden years of black film making, which he identifies as 1968 to 1978. And "film making" is to be understood in a broad sense: not just actors, but also producers and directors and anyone else involved directly and indirectly. Everyone knows of the phenom that was "Shaft" but as Mitchell demonstrates, there were so many other noteworthy black films in that era, many of which were made outside of the Hollywood studio system and hence never seen by most of us, including many of the so-called blaxploitation movies ("blaxploitation is the commoditization of blackness", observes one of the talking heads). The works of Gordon Banks and Melvin Van Peebles get extensive attention, and along the way we get dozens and dozens of movie clips, one better/more intriguing than the other. It leads one (or at least me) to want to see these movies. It was amazing for me how quickly these 2 hrs. And 15 min came and went, and a genuine pleasure to watch this from start to finish. Last but not least, in the movie's opening credits, the title is showing as "Is That Black Enough For You?!? How One Decade Forever Changed the Movies (And Me)".

"Is That Black Enough For You?!?" premiered in early October at the new York Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim, and it is currently rated 100% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and for good reason. If you have any interest in a slice of movie history which most of us know very little about, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

This does cover black cinema from really the 1930's to 1980's. Everything outside of that is an afterthought at most.

Unfortunately, there are two major problems with this documentary. First is it skips over a lot. If not completely skipping it only skims the surface of those films, performers and filmmakers. Some of which it can be argued are more important that a lot that was included. Often they opted to cover & present as more influential fairly obscure films (never even released on DVD) rather than more successful films. Still what it did cover was entertaining.

Second, it made it sound like much of black cinema especially the 1960's to 1980's was only for black film goers. Some of these movies were successful because they also reached a white or other audience. Movies like Shaft, Coffey & others they mentioned were simply excellent movies with excellent performances, period. Funny they kind of mention that Motown music was only for black audience. Ridiculous. Even the Beatles recorded a couple of Motown songs.

I will rate this 7 out of 10, mainly for being entertaining. Plus I did learn about some films I've never heard of.